Various vehicular electronic devices such as an air-conditioner system, audio system, navigation system, cruise control system, and perimeter monitoring system have been mounted to vehicles in recent years. Therefore, the number of operation portions disposed around an instrument panel of the vehicle is increasing. As a result, it is difficult to arrange only single-function operation portions as all the operation portions.
In many cases, a single multifunction-intensive operation portion which enables operations of multiple functions has been mounted to recent vehicles. Specifically, an input device having the multifunction-intensive operation portion provided on a center console portion etc. is installed. The multifunction-intensive operation portion includes an arrow key, a rotary switch, a joystick and a slider type operation input device which have two-dimensional movable ranges. A structure using the joystick as the multifunction-intensive operation portion is disclosed in JP-A-2004-226301 (Patent Document 1).
In recent years, a multifunction-intensive operation portion specific to a driver is provided on a steering wheel.
However, the conventional multifunction-intensive operation portion has the following disadvantages when provided on the steering wheel as the operation portion specific to the driver. For example, a function to be used is selected by feeding forward or back the function in a predetermined direction when using the arrow key and rotary switch, causing burdensome operations. Further, since the current operation state is difficult to instinctively understand, the operations depend on the content on the display. The operability without visual confirmation is not excellent for the driver.
On the other hand, the joystick or the sliding type operation input device which have two-dimensional movable ranges provide excellent operability because the function menu can be pointed freely to select a function. However, the driver may accidentally perform an unintended operation input during the travel.
Such an erroneous operation may occur when the operation input device is provided on a portion except the steering wheel.